Two years ago, Google tried to plunk down $500 million for a little site called Yelp. But that didn't pan out; the deal fell apart. Then it launched a competing site called Places and hoped that it would get the same amount of free, user-generated content that Yelp, for better or for worse, seems to enjoy in spades. That didn't go so well either, as they had to eventually remove reviews from Yelp itself that previously filled in holes in their Places database.
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Now apparently still hungry for the localized advertising dollars that food review
sites like Yelp rake in, Google has bought Zagat, which comes with its ready
trove of restaurant review data, for better or for worse. Terms of the deal hasn't been
disclosed.
Founders Tim and Nina Zagat said in a statement on their site: “We
couldn't be happier to see our baby placed into such good hands and are
looking forward to being Googlers in the years ahead.”
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Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.